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John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society

Catalogue Entry

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Keywords
WC.602
Harbor Scene, Dordrecht
Alternate titles: Boats on the Maas; Dordrecht, Holland; Dutch Boats; Harbor Scene
ca. 1881
Watercolor on paper
10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.6 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman
Mattatuck Museum, Gift of Reverend DeWolf Perry (X68.226)
Provenance
Given by the artist to John Ferguson Weir;
by descent to Reverend DeWolfe Perry, Waterbury, Connecticut;
gift to present collection, 1964.
Exhibitions
1907 New Haven Paint and Clay Club
New Haven Paint and Clay Club, Connecticut, Annual Exhibition of 1907, April 1907, no. 128a, as Dordrecht, Holland, lent by Prof. J. F. Weir.
Literature
Hale 1957
Hale, John Douglass. "Life and Creative Development of John H. Twachtman." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1957. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1958, vol. 2, p. 517 (catalogue G, no. 800), as Boats on the Maas. (Hale concordance).
Mattatuck Museum 1968
The Connecticut Artists Collection. Waterbury, Conn.: Mattatuck Historical Society, 1968, p. 52, as Harbor Scene.
Peters 1995
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman (1853–1902) and the American Scene in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Frontier within the Terrain of the Familiar." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1995. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1996, vol. 1, p. 147; vol. 2, p. 673 ill. in b/w (fig. 130), as Harbor Scene.
Commentary

In this view along the Oude Maas River in Dordrecht, a small church can be seen (not yet identified) that also appears in the watercolor, Boats on the Maas (WC.601) and the etching with the same title (E.652). The church provides a marker of Twachtman's place in the landscape and the relativity of the distances that he was rendering. In the two watercolors, the church is in the left distance, whereas in the etching, it is on the right, as the etching is in reverse.

Twachtman used watercolor with restraint in this image, confining color to specific motifs rather than making use of his medium's fluidity. In the water, he left areas of the paper exposed to take advantage of its luminosity. 

This watercolor's first-known owner was John Ferguson Weir, who along with his brother Julian visited with John and Martha Twachtman while they were honeymooning in Holland in the summer of 1881. The work remained in John Ferguson Weir's family until 1964, when it was donated as part of the bequest of a descendant to its present collection.